Forum: Pay some attention to apartheid effects

Forum

Posted: Sunday, August 30, 2009

By John C. Bersia

Days after viewing "District 9," a quirky but compelling film set in South Africa that reveals much about human behavior, I cannot shake its troubling images and lessons. This mock documentary vividly presents what can happen when we succumb to our worst fears, insecurities and tendencies in dealing with those (in this case, extraterrestrials) whose origin and culture we neither understand nor appreciate.

As a result, the newcomers - who descend from a spacecraft stalled over the city of Johannesburg - are subjected to third-class status (if not worse), segregation, poverty, sub-standard housing, brutality, forced relocation and cruel stereotyping based on communication difficulties and ignorance. Sadly, this fictitious environment is not that different from what we witness in too many parts of the world on a daily basis.

Indeed, not long ago, the leaders who ran South Africa actually endorsed such practices under a rigid system of racial segregation known as apartheid. Multiparty elections in 1994 may have swept that misery into history, but its legacy provides a permanent, almost overwhelming backdrop for the film.

That thought was foremost in my mind as I left the theater; disappointingly, many other audience members failed to make the obvious connections. As I listened to the post-screening conversation, I heard comments ranging from the inane to the absurd. Some wondered how the filmmakers had "built all those shacks," not realizing the extent of real-life shantytowns in South Africa. Others even could not grasp why the film was shot in that country.

Did the repression of the apartheid era happen too long ago for it to remain in their memories? Was their exposure to the region's history negligible or nonexistent? Regardless of the reason, their actions reminded me that we have far to go in bridging the gap of cultural and global awareness and knowledge.

There are certain issues - and apartheid ranks among them - that register as indelible features of the eras in which they appear. Quite frankly, there is no excuse for anyone who makes it through secondary school to miss out on learning what apartheid was, why it happened and how it met defeat.

During the terminal decade of apartheid, I was responsible for monitoring and commenting on the problem and its ramifications. On more than one occasion, various South African government officials contacted me to find out why my news organization was so keen on criticizing their political system. My answer was always the same: because it supports practices that are fundamentally wrong, unfair, abhorrent and destined to fail. So was their response - a diplomatic brush-off, at which point I resumed my harsh commentary.

The first signs of serious change in South Africa came in the late 1980s. Isolated and pressured by global sanctions, condemnation and internal restiveness, the country's officials slowly began tearing down the "pillars of apartheid." Those were laws controlling virtually every aspect of people's lives, such as dictating where one could live and travel based on race. Progress accelerated after the election of 1989, which ushered F.W. de Klerk into the country's presidency. Though a solid member of the ruling National Party, he appeared a genuine catalyst for substantial reform.

I always have believed a 1976 trip that de Klerk made to the United States, in which he began to appreciate how different races could work together in relative harmony, helped propel his thinking.

Most notably, he arranged the release of political prisoner Nelson Mandela, who became South Africa's next president and the inspiration for the subsequent phase of the nation's life. With Mandela, de Klerk shared the Nobel Peace Prize in 1993.

Now, a decade and a half later, we have a new South Africa, with unprecedented freedoms. Still, we have not escaped the past. Many of the effects of apartheid linger. Perhaps most important, we dare not underestimate how easy it would be - especially in moments of fear and insecurity - to revert to the ugly behavior of "District 9."

• John C. Bersia, who won a Pulitzer Prize in editorial writing for the Orlando Sentinel in 2000, is special assistant to the president for global perspectives at the University of Central Florida. Send e-mail to johncbersia@msn.com.